Perception quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside perception — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights."
"Further-more, partisan attachments powerfully shape political perceptions, beliefs and values, and incumbents enjoy advantages well beyond the way in which their districts are configured."
"The artistic experience, at its highest, was actually a natural analogue of mystical experience. It produced a kind of intuitive of perception."
"There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment."
"Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them."
"Things which we see are not by themselves what we see ... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them."
"The world is nothing but change, our life is only perception."
"If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception."
"The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty."
"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated."
"Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine."
"These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know."
"There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing."
"Our flawed mechanisms of perception and thought are not a cause for grief, but an opportunity to evolve, for an internal evolution of consciousness that will also make possible, in a sustainable form, our aspirations toward what we call individual success and global progress."
"The brain is the highest of the organs in position, and it is protected by the vault of the head; it has no flesh or blood or refuse. It is the citadel of sense-perception."
"I actually can't think of anything worse than being famous... Fame really distorts your perception of yourself."
"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass."
"What you experience as "reality," including your physical body and aging, is shaped by your habits of perception."
"Perception is a selective act of attention and interpretation."
"It is essential that we understand people for who they are as individuals and not the public perception of them or their family and past."
